Commission-based UGC: paying creators a share of ad spend
How a commission campaign works here: the creator films, you approve, you launch the video as an ad from your account, and we count her share.
Commission-based UGC is the model the market is moving to: instead of paying a creator a fee to film, you pay her a share of what her video earns once it runs as an ad. It lines up incentives in a way a flat fee never did. The creator who films the hook that scales gets paid like it, and the brand pays for performance rather than for footage. On HourlyUGC it is one of the three ways a campaign can pay, next to hourly sessions and paying per video, and the parts of it that matter are the mechanics: who launches the ad, who counts the spend, and what happens when you change the terms.
The base that pays nothing to film
When you create a campaign, the first question is how creators get paid. Commission-based is the card that pays nothing up front: creators earn a share of what you spend running their video as an ad, on whichever network and account it runs in. You do not need an ad account connected to pick it. The account is asked for later, in Build Ads, where the videos become ads. That ordering is deliberate: the brief and the applicants come first, and the ad account is a detail of launch day.
The share is set as a sentence with pills: a percent of the spend, with an optional cap per video, or a flat amount instead of a percent if you prefer a ceiling you can say out loud. Under the sentence the form tells you what the share comes to on a round number of spend, so you are never guessing what a percent means in money. You can also add a share of sales in its place, or a CPM term beside it, from the Compensation section with More.
Who launches the ad, and why it matters
The creator does not run the ad. You do, from your own ad account, through Build Ads in the campaign. You pick the approved videos, pick the account, set the ad set defaults and the copy, and the video is pushed into your account as an ad. The spend is yours, the audience is yours, the results are in your Ads Manager like any other ad. What the platform adds is the accounting: every ad built this way is tied to the video and to the creator who made it, so the spend on it can be read from the network, per ad, and her share counted from it.
What the creator sees before she films
In the campaign room the terms are written out, in words, before she accepts a brief. In Build Ads, every video carries the term it was delivered under, so your team sees “earns a share of ad spend” or “no share” beside each one before launching. Nothing about the compensation is hidden in a contract: the number she saw when she uploaded is the number that applies to that video, and the review step adds up what the videos you picked will cost in words.
Changing the terms later
Shares change. A brand that starts with a generous share to attract creators tightens it once the campaign has momentum; a brand that started with none adds one when the first ads work. The rule the platform applies is simple and in your favour on both sides: a change applies to videos delivered from now on. The ones already uploaded keep what they were promised, whether they are approved yet or still in review. The form says it under the share, and when a change touches delivered videos the campaign tells you how many keep their current terms before you confirm.
The same forward rule covers adding a share to a campaign that had none. A creator whose video you approved last month under a per-video price does not retroactively gain a share of this month’s spend, and a creator who films this week under the new terms does. It keeps the ledger honest, and it means you can experiment with compensation without rewriting history.
A share of sales instead of spend
For brands that would rather pay on outcomes than on inputs, the Compensation section offers a share of sales in place of the spend share: a percent of every order, or a fixed amount per order. Then it asks which sales count, and this is the part worth reading twice. The default is the network’s own count, what Meta reports for that ad. The alternative is our count, which needs either Shopify connected or the Hourly pixel on your store. Only the option you chose is counted and paid; the other is ignored, and an order is counted once, on the last click within a week. When both counts exist, the campaign shows them side by side so you can see what each would have cost before you pick.
Commission next to the other two models
Hourly
- You book hours at a rate
- Held when you hire
- Paid when you mark the session done
Per video
- You fund slots at a price
- A slot pays on approval
- Decline and the slot comes back
Commission
- Nothing to film
- A share of the ad spend
- Or a share of sales
| Commission on spend | Hourly session | Per video | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Creator is paid | A share of the spend on ads built from her video | For hours you booked, when you mark the session done | One slot per video you approve |
| You pay up front | Nothing to film | The session, held at hire | The slots, funded when you want |
| Best when | You will run the videos as ads and want performance to pay | You want volume from one creator you trust | You want many faces and only pay for keepers |
| Ad account needed | At launch, in Build Ads | Only if you also run the videos as ads | Only if you also run the videos as ads |
Platforms built around commission alone make the same argument we do about incentives, and it is a good argument. Where we differ is that commission is one base, not the only one, and the other two exist for the campaigns where commission is the wrong tool: a product shoot you need regardless of whether you run ads, a batch of listing videos for Amazon, a session with a creator who already carries your brand. The post on hourly sessions versus paying per video is the guide to those two, and any base can take a spend share on top for the videos that do end up as ads.
Running a commission campaign well
- Say the share in the brief, in money. Creators understand “a share of what we spend on your ad” better than a percent. The form’s own line, what the share comes to on a round amount of spend, is the sentence to copy.
- Approve for the feed, not for the brief. A commission video only pays if you run it. Approve the ones you would actually put spend behind, and request changes on the rest instead of approving and shelving them.
- Launch from Build Ads, every time. The share is counted on ads built from the platform. The post on going from an approved video to a live ad without downloading anything covers the launch itself.
- Watch the per-creator view. The Ads tab shows spend and results by video and by creator, so you can see which faces earn their share and brief the next campaign around them.
- Add buy & rebate if the product has to be in hand. A commission campaign pays nothing to film, so give creators a way to get the product: samples, or buy & rebate if you sell on Amazon.
The UGC for paid ads page shows the whole path from brief to live ad, the affiliate marketing page covers the sales-share variant, and the payments and invoicing page explains how creators are paid from the campaign without an invoice changing hands.